When Para-alpine skier Josh Dueck arrived to compete at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, he wasn’t exactly feeling the unbridled excitement one might expect.
In what Dueck called “a major hiccup,” the entire team’s bags and gear were left on the tarmac when a chartered flight took off to bring the athletes from Munich to Russia.
“We arrived at the Games, the biggest moment of our career, and none of us have underwear [or] toothpaste, never mind skis or our specialized sit-skis,” he recalled, over the phone from his home in Vernon.
In that case, it was Team Canada’s chef de mission at the time, Ozzie Sawicki, who diffused the situation.
Sawicki greeted the team at the airport, immediately assured the athletes that their gear was secure and on the next flight to Sochi, and that they weren’t missing out on valuable training time due to shoddy conditions at the time. He promised the skiers specifically that the conditions weren’t unlike those Whistler sees each spring, promising that their abundance of West Coast training would translate into a distinct advantage once the competition began.
“Rather than holding stress about all the things that we couldn’t control, he gave us direction on what we could,” Dueck said.
“He pivoted the situation, really. He took it from what was potentially quite disastrous into, ‘Here, this is our advantage.’ And he actually meant it, and he convinced us of it, and our team went on to find great success in Sochi.”
Dueck is remembering that experience as he prepares to follow in Sawicki’s footsteps. He is taking on the role of chef de mission for the upcoming 2022 Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing, China, the Canadian Paralympic Committee announced earlier this week.
The chef de mission effectively works alongside mission staff to serve as the “team captain,” Dueck explained. With the title comes a set of responsibilities that include acting as the spokesperson for the whole of Team Canada leading up to and during the Games, as well as mentoring, supporting and motivating each of the approximately 55 athletes competing across six different sports.
Dueck admitted he’s “a little bit overwhelmed; a little bit shocked,” but nonetheless “really excited to have this opportunity to work with the team.”
He added, “As we move into the Games I’m sure there’s going to be many challenging situations that we face as a team, or some athletes face individually. And my role then would be to be the firewall or to be the armour of the team and just allow them to focus on the purity of sport.”
The 39-year-old retired Paralympic champion is a natural fit for the role, considering just how well regarded he already is as a leader among Canada’s high performance athletes.
After suffering a life-altering injury when he overshot a jump while coaching, the Kimberley, B.C.-born athlete went on to make his Paralympic debut in his backyard during the 2010 Winter Paralympic Games, where he won a silver medal in the men’s sitting slalom race. Four years later in Sochi, he landed on the podium again, but this time earned a gold medal in the super combined. He also added another silver medal in the downhill and was subsequently named Canada’s Closing Ceremony flag bearer. He was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.
Since retiring from Paralympic competition, Dueck also became the first person to successfully perform a backflip on a sit ski. (An accomplishment that subsequently earned him a segment on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.) He currently serves as the executive director of Freestyle BC, a post he plans to keep in addition to his newest gig.
While these experiences have all undoubtedly prepared Dueck for the role of chef, “the job description doesn’t really exist” as it once did, he said.
“Everybody’s playbooks have gotten thrown out, in terms of ‘How do you operate in a pandemic?’ Nothing is going to be traditional for the Paralympic winter team going to Beijing.”
Even with the good news of a vaccine on the horizon, COVID-19 will continue to pose additional challenges for members of Team Canada, ranging from heightened health risks for the Paralympic athletes who may be dealing with autoimmune issues, to a lack of test events at the Olympic venues.
But Dueck said he took on the role because he is up for the challenge.
“I think my whole life has prepared me for this opportunity,” he said. “Canada, and sport, has provided me a life worth living 10 times over, over the last 25 years, and I don’t know where I’d be without it. And so I feel like this role for me is going to test every bit of my ability, but at the same time—duty is a strong word—but I feel like it’s my duty to give back to sport and make sure that these meaningful opportunities exist for the next generation, because somebody did that for me and inevitably somebody has to do that today and hopefully somebody will pick up the torch to do that tomorrow.”
Dueck added: “Sport has the ability to transform and change and transcend who we are. Life is short and life is sweet so we might as well get the most out of it.”
